


this isn't our first time around (i've got the strangest feeling)

by coldho



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Gerry v Self-Care Challenge, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Tim v Self-Care Bonus Round, also Spoilers we get to look forward to…, also theres no plot, everyone gets to be depressed, we start with Sasha being the only put-together member of the archives but guess what
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 03:37:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19782448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coldho/pseuds/coldho
Summary: Mr. Spider feels bad for treating Jon's allies like flies.





	this isn't our first time around (i've got the strangest feeling)

**Author's Note:**

> This is literally just pseudo-happy-ending hurt/comfort everyone-talks-to-each-other fanservice for Me. There's vague kudos to the Web has a big relationship/role w the Beholding and fucking up Jon theories but trust me the braincells are going hngggg hurt/comf.

Sasha blinks in a house that she has never been in, in a place she has never been in. She is staring at a table that she quite likes, unique with swirling paint and swirling wood, but it isn’t the table she’d just been looking at.

She sits down on the floor heavily. Bad things happen in Artifact Storage. That’s why she’d asked for her transfer.

-

She doesn’t stay on the floor like she wants, lay insensate until the very sweet new neighbors she hasn’t met yet come knocking because she hasn’t left the building in days.

She’ll be just as persnickety about the trash in this life as she was in the last, apparently.

Instead, she takes the heavy metal vase from the table and wields it up over her shoulder like a bat. She’s scared to touch anything besides the table in the house, so it will have to do. Slowly, she inches her way through the house, nudging doors open with her toes and ducking around corners vase-first. There are so many rooms, and all of them are pristine. Even the attic is spotless, and there’s no basement to be secretly leaky or filled with foundational cracks. The house doesn’t look lived in; there’s no food in the fridge and all the beds are made up with military precision.

When she doubles back to the parlor, to return the vase because there is no one else here, just her, she finds a blank envelope slipped under the front door. It hadn’t been there when she first passed, so she hefts the vase higher up her shoulder and bumps open the door with her hip.

It’s getting late. She can see people in houses, but there’s no one on the streets, lamps just starting to flicker on.

No leads, then, except for the letter – which will, it turns out, give her plenty to do. When she opens it, she finds two pages typed in crisp font. The first gives her the address – 105 Hill Top Road in the Crowley Area of Oxford, which sounds familiar. She’s not sure why; it’s a new house. Today is the 5th of October, still 2016, but the deed, bearing _her signature_ , is signed Sasha Jones.

“I’m not,” she whispers into the empty house that doesn’t care, but it is her signature.

The date is wrong, and she’s used to an archive salary. She definitely doesn’t have the money to afford this house.

The second page lists a link to her LinkedIn followed by a brief set off bullet points. Jones does programming, remotely. There’s also a copy of her CV on her LinkedIn, all minimalist grey-white and cursive descriptions of her skills. It looks like something she’d set up, and she does have all those skills.

At the very least, she is _actually_ qualified for what is apparently her job, but the figure at the bottom of the paper makes her choke. She’s not qualified for whatever pays for _that_ , but at least she can see how she afforded the house.

Regardless, the house is noted as being the gift of a former employer. She hopes she sent a nice letter because _wow, what kind of people does this-she work for?_

While she has her phone out, she also takes a moment to look up the Magnus Institute. She can’t find any evidence that it ever existed. There’s nothing like it in all of London.

It doesn’t make her heart stutter like it should’ve. Instead, she thinks, _well_. At least whatever Artifact Storage did to her is balanced by the comp.

-

“Hi Mum,” Sasha greets as her mother spills into the seat across from her. “How was Mongolia?”

“Oh, darling,” Teresa – or the woman she knows as Teresa, but is now Terese – moans, “Goodness was it _windy_.”

Sasha smiles and nods and slowly trails her finger down the sushi menu. She’d spent the past couple of weeks taking the city she’d once passed through but never really been to slowly. She’d taken one of the empty notebooks in the living room, opened the maps app on her phone, and set up a grid system. Tackled one thing at a time with a slow precision she’s surprised and not surprised by. Say what she does about it, but her former job was great for honing her nerves and research and organization skills.

“The yurts,” Terese continued, “Were _incredible_ , I wish your father and I could have had those back – ”

The nearest grocery had been a couple of miles away, so she’d ordered in until she’d reached the first convenience store. She still isn’t sure if anything is amiss because she’s never lived here, but the terms in the store all look like things she remembers.

The foods on the menu also look familiar. It wasn’t too far past the grocery store, but it had looked good and she was quite frankly tired of being by herself. She’d received no requests for work, and no one visited – although Ted and Arnold, the sweet couple next door, always make sure to wave and chat when she steps out to throw away the trash. It’s a lonely life filled with a purpose she knows is fake.

It’s more of a supposition than a fully-fledged thought.

“Your father is still there! He’s finally decided to go travel the whole Trans-Siberian railway. I would’ve followed but my bones aren’t what they’re used to, sitting for too long really gets my joints – ”

Teresa – _Terese_ – and Arthur– still Arthur – in this place are much like the mother and father she’d known, according to Facebook. Eccentric, explorative, and very much an enigma compared to her. She loved her parents in that distant way that comes from having raised yourself to be a practical member of society because your parents spent most of your childhood dancing naked under the harvest moon and decorating every archway in their home with beaded curtains and teaching you verbal Latin a as a “fun family code-language.” They hadn’t had to worry about much of anything because of the hefty trust left behind by Arthur's father, which didn’t explain why she’d been born in an artist’s commune but did explain why career day had always seized her heart with fear.

Sure, she’d gone into supernatural research in her other life (which had _delighted_ the other them), but at least she’d gone into it with significant computer skills and a staunch skepticism. She’d always agreed with her parents about the existence of More, but she’d also always Known Better than their unquestioning belief.

“We bought you a little something for the new place, also, so I had to bring it back – ”

“Mum, that’s really sweet,” she cut off, face blank and carefully withdrawn. She’s mostly relieved that they’re still the constantly-traveling, ever-unthinking parent’s she’s always loved, but that also means they’re still the constantly-traveling, ever-unthinking parent’s she’s always had to manage. “But the place is furnished, I don’t think I can fit a whole yurt in my room.”

“Oh, darling, no,” Terese laughs, taking her hand, “It’s only a life-size yak, with the lovely saddle. Perfect to liven up your living room! Is it all neutrals again, because your father and I were thinking – ”

She’s _mostly_ relieved.

-

Sasha takes to watching Dateline into the late (early?) hours. She used to be a morning person, but she’s stopped sleeping much as the months wear on.

She’s also never been much of a TV person, but true crime feels warmly familiar. It’s comfortable in its investigation, but it doesn’t bear the desperation that shows like The Haunting heft onto her. It’s also blessedly mindless. It had taken her months to start using her television, but it had been the result of a breakdown. She’d spent a week of evenings curled against the table looking into the man who’d left her the house. George Webb.

There had been so many of him in the phone book, and she’d spent so much time with the same name rolling ink across her cornea, the same shrill beeping of unanswered telephones digging into her ears even when she wasn’t calling. There had been nothing, and there was nothing, and there was no one for her except for the table, which had been there from the start.

She doesn’t know how to get out of there; it’s been months, but she still remembers the worms, and the table with curling patterns that continue to ache more than the print of George Webb.

She was usually functional during the days, but nights were still and silent and filled with nothing to do but worry over things she couldn’t control. In that moment of clarity, she’d taken the same vase from her first day and used it to protect herself once again. The table shattered easily, and to cover the sound of her gasps that followed she turned on the TV.

It might’ve been there, but it was never there to help her. She was sure of that.

And that’s the thing. She’s very lonely and running out of things to do. She’s not even sure if she _wants_ to find her way back; like a puppet on a string, like the resignation letters she’d tried to submit a lifetime ago, something pulls her back. Something tells her there’s not a way back, and the world she’d return to, anyways, wouldn’t offer much of a life.

She thinks she’s going crazy. Maybe she’ll get a pet.

-

“We’re always looking for volunteers, too, if you’re interested in that kind of thing,” the woman at the front desk says cheerfully while clacking across her keyboard. The sound of her bracelets jangling against the counter-top somehow manages to resonate through the din of the shelter. “ _Especially_ on the weekdays. You said you work from home?”

“Uh-huh, yeah,” Sasha confirms. She glances back over the paperwork, tucking hair behind her ears and sucking at her lower lip. Next round of vaccinations in two weeks, and he’s already 3 and a ½ stone.

That’ll make for a fun distraction.

“Lovely, I’ll throw in a pamphlet,” she says, smiling brightly around the computer. “And he’ll love having you home. Gobstopper is, well, fun. A… _little_ loud, and he needs a lot of attention, but I promise you that’s always how it is with puppies! You, ah, aren’t living in an apartment, right?”

“No, and I don’t mind,” Sasha assures, trading her own nervous but clearly ecstatic smile. “I love puppies.”

She’d known he was the one based on the way he tripped her up upon first meeting her, crowding her ankles and licking at her knees within seconds of being let out of his pen. His energy is what she needs.

One of the things she’s realized is that you don’t join the Institute if you have anything to lose. Early into her search, she’d gone through the contacts on her phone. Mom and Dad, the few friends she’d had, everyone she’d known before working at the Institute was there (although the names were sometimes off). Her emails and texts had sounded like things she’d write, even if she doesn’t remember writing them.

There aren’t many, though. There weren’t very many on her other phone, either. Her parents are often gone, the rest of her family is small and distant, she didn’t keep up with most of her friends after grad school, and it wasn’t until the Institute that she’d made more than acquaintances for the first time in a _really_ long time. That’s why she can’t help but reach for the biscuits she thinks Martin would most likely pair with it when she makes tea. Why she can’t help but hear the scoff Jon would give when she reads an especially stupid front-pager.

“Were you thinking of renaming him?”

“Um,” she falters, “Is he too old? I was thinking Fido.”

“Fido?” the woman asks, staring at her curiously. Her eyes flicker between Sasha’s bulky glasses and long, librarian-esque skirt. She probably expected something more creative from a nerd.

“Yes, but spelled…”

Of all of them, she misses Tim the most, and it’s why she settled on a dog. He was always more of a cat person; there would’ve been no end to their fight about it. She got the dog he would’ve most hated, too. Gobstopper wasn’t just an energetic pup: he was a loping Great Dane with oversized paws, the stupidest smile, and the absolute worst drool.

She can already imagine what it’ll be like when he’s full-grown. His drool will get _everywhere_ , and it’ll be even worse because he won’t understand his size. He’ll probably be the type to constantly try climbing into her lap. She’s not a small person, either; she’s already dreading the leg cramps she’ll inevitably develop from being pushed off the bed by the dog at night.

“P-h-y-d-e-a-u-x. Phydeaux,” she explains, biting back a laugh. Tim would’ve hated him, and she would’ve relished their introduction.

-

They’re delivered while she’s at the farmer’s market.

She’s spent the almost-year since her…arrival trying desperately to be normal. Weekends at the farmer’s market in East Oxford, with aesthetic pictures she uploads to the Instagram account she never created and doesn’t know the half of. Regular but brief coding requests she knows she’s overly eager to fill. Visits to different dog’s parks in the afternoons with Phydeaux that stretch a little long because she doesn’t have anything to go back to.

It’s dull, repetitive, like she’s caught in a web. Web, like Webb, that she takes to blaming on Webb even though she can’t get any part of herself together enough to do anything about it. It’s eerie, what it reminds her of. She doesn’t like to think about it, and the web – Webb, or whatever it is – doesn’t often let her.

But it let her often enough. She’d considered visiting a psychologist – and had. But only for a short while. The woman she’d seen had been around her age with big, green eyes and long, thin fingers. They’d tapped at the edge of her notebook throughout the session without making any sound while Sasha talked about the nightmares she pretended had no reason and how she felt like she couldn’t connect with people because she was going through things they’d never understand and mostly about the way the universe seemed to be holding her in a firm, motionless grip so she’d Stay Still.

“Existentialism,” the woman said sagely, still tapping silently, “Significant problem in our generation.”

She’d been taught breathing exercises that made her feel even more constricted, and after four sessions she’d given up.

There are two envelopes sat neatly side-by-side on her front porch, one thin and one thick. The thick one is blank, but the thin one bears her name. The material of the envelopes, the type of the font – it’s all like it was yesterday.

She takes them inside with her armful of produce, stares at them and decides dealing with whatever she’s been thrown into will be easier on a full stomach, even though its only five. She’s always been a bit of a grandma at heart, she reasons, so she sets about making dinner – quick and cold, fresh greens and home-made chicken salad. Lovely meal for a lovely end-of-summer day; she’s always liked the soft breeze of the season. The crispness that calls for the not-quite beginning of fall.

What the computer will pull up, she already knows, will be in direct contrast with her meal.

She takes her time opening the packet, pulling out the first few pages. There’s a screenshot of a Craigslist ad followed by a lease for the house, one with two names rather than one.

 _Gerard von Closen_ , she reads. Sounds a bit prick-ish, but she’s worked with Jonathon Sims. Surely living with someone like that won’t be too much different than working with them.

It also sounds important, so she looks him up. There is the gore of a home gone wrong, disproven matricide withdrawn from testimonies of child abuse and institutions and self-mutilation – and she knows this.

She knows this because it sounds a lot like another Gerard she’d read about, about the one in the cheap tabloids she’d indulged in while fresh out of college. About the one she’d so recently checked up on from his appearance in old statements.

She takes a methodical bite of spinach. It’s gone lukewarm. She takes a slow breath, then presses her forehead into arms crossed over the tabletop.

 _Oh fuck,_ she thinks.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes. Yes I did all of this to make a Spiders Georg joke.
> 
> Also:  
> Me: looks up the address for farmers markets in oxford  
> Also Me: they gotta have dateline in the UK


End file.
